trading sunshine for pumpkins

I love the fall. I felt a little out of my element living in southern California over the summer (I'm not complaining, just saying...) and although the weather was freakishly gorgeous every day, I didn't grow up on the beach in sandals and shorts 365 days a year. I own one pair of shorts and had to invest in a nice pair of flip flops. But now fall is coming.

Fall means apple pie. And stew. And the smell of pumpkin spice. And sweaters and jackets, which I have a fair collection of. It means blankets and warm boots, and hot chocolate. It means the start of basketball season and the ushering in of the holiday season. I love all these things.

Signs for pumpkin patches and corn mazes have been popping up in the last week or so, and we're making plans to go with our awesome new friends the Youngs (Becca and Zach, not to be confused with Christy and Jared although we wish you were close enough to come with us too!). Zach is Landon's A school bff, and lucky for me his wife is pretty cool too so we've been hanging out the four of us quite a bit.

To catch up on our adventures, Landon and I have recently had our first Ikea experience. We realized by the third hour of being there that we were unprepared for such an excursion, and although we love having our tv off the floor and on a proper piece of furniture, we will be returning for some other essentials in the near future. We're still working on being big people and getting our home together. We've also been enjoying $7 bowling (that's for two pairs of shoes and a lane for an hour, plus free soda) at the base, and so far, happily, that's been a weekly occurrence. I've been getting some good scores in the 140's and Landon finally got his Spiderman bowling bowl drilled, so I imagine we'll make quite a pair at our next family reunion cosmic bowling night.

We still have a little unpacking to do in our new place but we're settling in nicely. I've had a couple of kitchen disasters but successfully made oatmeal brownie drops yesterday, so even though there continues to be a funny smell coming from somewhere in there, I believe we're coming to some sort of understanding ("we" being the kitchen and me). Also, our new friends happened to have an extra microwave lying around, so that's made life a little easier too.

So cheers to the good smelling things of autumn and my appropriate wardrobe for such weather. Hello fall.